The present invention relates to summarizing cross-network user behavioral data and further relates to restoring damaged data structures, either data structures summarizing cross-network user behavioral data or data structures remotely identifying to logic running on a user computer. The summarizing cross-network user behavioral data may particularly include publishing the data to one or more data structures that become accessible to a server hosting an authorized domain when a user accesses the authorized domain. The restoring of damaged data structures may particularly include automatically detecting deletion of or damaged to data structures and restoring the damaged data structures.
Advertising is most successful when it matches the viewer's desires. When the viewer uses a client computer to surf the web and visit websites hosted by servers, advertising can be targeted. One way to target users is to provide sponsored links in response to a search, using a search engine such as the engines provided by Google and Yahoo. Another way is to trigger advertising when a user visits a website, for instance using a so-called web beacon. Cookies can be used to identify a user that is searching or visiting a website and match the user to a server-side database that selects advertising to deliver. Server-side databases currently reflect information collected by servers connected to websites that users visit. Websites that are aggregated into a particular server-side database can be described as belonging to a user behavior collection network.
An opportunity arises to better target users, taking advantage of client software running on the client computer. Client-side software can monitor a user's web browsing activity, regardless of whether websites visited belong to a first or second user behavior collection network or no network at all. New technology can publish user behavior data during browsing and reduce or eliminate reliance on matching the user to the server-side database.